Boy George sent to prison in gay hustler case

By 365gay Newscenter Staff

(London) Singer Boy George has been sentenced to 15 months behind bars for false imprisonment involving a gay escort.

The openly gay former Culture Club singer was sentenced under his real name, George O’Dowd.

His attorney, Adrian Waterman, had argued for a suspended sentence. Waterman said that O’Dowd, 47, and 29-year-old Audun Carlsen were behaving like “drug-crazed idiots” but when the singer was sober, he was “a kind and generous man” and that “there is no shortage of people to help him through his recovery.”

Judge David Radford disagreed. “This is a case where custody is the more likely option,” he said, passing sentence on Friday.

During the trial, the court was told that O’Dowd met Carlsen on a gay internet site and agreed to meet at the singer’s home where Carlsen was to pose for a naked photo shoot.

The two men later exchanged emails, and at one point O’Dowd accused Carlsen of hacking into his computer and stealing the photos. Nevertheless, O’Dowd invited Carlsen to another photo shoot at his home.

It was a plot to exact revenge, the prosecution said, for what O’Dowd believed was theft of the original pictures.

After O’Dowd had taken several photos of Carlsen, the performer invited the younger man into his bedroom.

When Carlsen entered the room, he realized a second man had joined O’Dowd.

O’Dowd has refused to name the other man, prosecutor Heather Norton said.

Carlsen was forced to the floor. “Mr. O’Dowd produced a set of handcuffs. They placed one end on Mr Carlsen’s right wrist and the other end was placed through a hook that was screwed to a fixture near the bed,” Norton told the court during last month’s trial.

She said that Carlsen, “was frightened, shaking and crying. His fear increased when Mr O’Dowd returned into the room carrying with him a box.”

The box, said Norton, contained chains and leather straps.

Carlsen managed to free himself by pulling a hook the handcuffs were attached to from the wall. He escaped through a window clad in only his underwear and called police from a local news vendor’s stand.

O’Dowd did not testify on his own behalf, but the court. In a transcript of a police interrogation O’Dowd admitted he handcuffed Carlsen but denied punching or assaulting the hustler.

The performer’s attorney suggested that bruises Carlsen had could have been due to the fact that he was HIV positive.

It was the latest brush O’Dowd has had with the law.

In 2006, a judge in New York City sentenced him to five days of community service after being convicted of filing a false police report.

The singer had called police in October 2005 with a bogus report of a burglary by a male prostitute at his lower Manhattan apartment. When police went to investigate they found cocaine inside.

He was originally charged with drug offenses but under an agreement with prosecutors he pleaded guilty to the lesser charges and worked off his sentence picking garbage.

*365Gay.com